The scariest kind of murderer is one we cannot understand. Murder for greed, or profit, or revenge, or any motive really is rational. Killing for no reason at all, now that’s disturbing, and that is why Targets is so good. It is about a clean-cut young man named Bobby Thompson, who could be called all-American. He drives a Mustang, he eats Baby Ruths, he loves his parents. And one day, he murders his family and leaves behind this note, typed in red ink: “I just killed my wife and my mother. I know they’ll get me. But before that, many more will die.”

Targets was the first film by Peter Bogdanovich, a key figure in the New Hollywood movement on the 1970s, when he would direct The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon among others. In the mid 1960s, Bogdanovich moved to Los Angeles after distinguishing himself as a talented young film critic. He got a job working for Roger Corman, and distinguished himself as the assistant director of the massive biker hit The Wild Angels. Based on its success, Corman offered Bogdanovich the chance to direct a feature with two stipulations: incorporate stock footage from The Terror, and give its star, Boris Karloff, two days of work to fulfill a contractual obligation. The young filmmaker took these requirements and made them into advantages, fashioning a clever plot he executed with the skill of a veteran. “The world belongs to the young,” Karloff says early in Targets, and Bogdanovich, who also wrote the screenplay, was clearly staking a claim on his territory.

Karloff plays Byron Orlock, an aging horror star who has just completed his latest picture, a costume drama entitled The Terror. Orlock is sick of the corrupt Hollywood system and tired of the repetitive parts, and declares his retirement. We cut back and forth between Orlock dealing with his decision and preparing for a final public appearance, with the increasingly alarming story of Bobby. In one shocking sequence, the camera patiently observes Bobby’s methodical activities atop an oil container beside a highway. He lays out an arsenal of weapons, has a sandwich and a Coke that he brought along in a brown paper bag, and then shoots random people driving along the road with deadly accuracy. With its unblinking passivity, the lengthy sequence is like something made by the Italian Neorealists. Even if Washington D.C. hadn’t been terrorized by snipers a few years ago, these scenes would still resonate for modern audiences as genuinely horrific.

The camera in Targets frequently assumes the role of the assassin, peering down the eye of the rifle scope. The audience is made to identitfy more with the killer than with his victims, and in the climactic shootout inside a drive-in, Bogdanovich goes further. Bobby hides behind the drive-in screen and fires upon the audience and this time, the camera stands for the bullets instead of the gun scope, so that the audience feels as if it is implicated in the murder of victims who are watching a movie just as they are, creating a very complicated and unusual mixture of emotional responses.

Karloff, sporting his own cane and a visible limp is, according to Bogdanovich, playing what amounts to a fictionalized version of himself in the film. Instead of the physically imposing monsters upon which he staked his career, here is a warm and tender old man, with a artistocratic British accent. All of it is Karloff, except for the element of retirement. Karloff, the director admits, would never quit.